


The Head that Wears the Crown

by Arukou



Series: Tumblr Archive the Second [9]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt!Steve, Hurt/Comfort, Misunderstandings, OT6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 03:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14926190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arukou/pseuds/Arukou
Summary: Steve had always been good friends with the Howling Commandos, but his new team has no desire for friendship.





	The Head that Wears the Crown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MusicalLuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalLuna/gifts).



> For [MusicalLuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalLuna/pseuds/MusicalLuna) who prompted: "in the early days, steve doesn't realize the avengers care about him a lot because they are vastly different people with vastly different socialization than the commandos, but then something happens to him in a fight and the avengers collectively flip their lids and that is how he learns he is Very Important to them."

Steve had never been a stranger to friendly teasing. Bucky was a little shit, of course, but so were the Commandos. He’d been called every moniker that popped into his friends’ brains: “Captain Tightpants” (long before it was a cultural reference, thank you very much), “Captain Mom,” “Twinkle Toes,” “All-American Showgirl,” “Blushing Betty,” and names far more filthy. But he’d understood why. He was the commanding officer, and he was, when it came down to it, a greenie who got damn lucky 95% of the time. Dugan, Dernier, Falsworth, even Bucky, they all would have been infinitely more qualified to be CO, and so he knew where the teasing was coming from. He knew it was his men’s way of telling him they cared for him while keeping his ego in check. (Bucky could’ve told them Steve was a good enough self-critic as it was and they all could just damn well stick to the dancing references.)

The Avengers, though. Steve had no idea what to think of the way they spoke to him.

“Hey, Capsicle, you mind moving to the left? You’re in my sun.” Tony, of course.

“Look at this. I found a fossil in the kitchen.” Natasha, with a smirk.

“Cap, put on a sweater. None of us were planning on a peep show today.” Clint.

“Fair Steven, Anthony tells me you have something lodged in your behind. If you would but visit the healing halls of my mother, she might be able to aid you.” Thor. (Steve genuinely did not know if Thor was in on Tony’s joke or if he’d taken the “stick up his ass” thing seriously.)

It was all so crass and so…so callous. No one slapped him on the back to let him know they were joking, no one laughed, no one turned it off and just talked to him like a human being. It always seemed to be cruel names and cutting comments, never a kind word or even companionable silence. Could people in the 21st century not share a room without biting into each other? Bruce was the only one who spoke to him with anything like neutrality, and even then, he spoke to Steve barely at all. Mostly he kept to himself, holed up in the lab Tony had gifted to him, emerging only for meals and yoga sessions with Natasha.

They’d been through an alien invasion together, had each other’s backs, and Steve had thought maybe that shared experience would ease the rough edges between him and the others, but apparently not. He was the fuddy duddy, the scolding father, the stodgy CO no one wanted around. Message received.

And that was fine. It wasn’t war times anymore, and Steve had read the files. His new team was full of people who were lone wolves by nature, and what’s more, none of them were technically soldiers. Clint had been once, but that was a long time ago. Nat, Tony, Bruce, all lone operators. Thor had been in…something. But it didn’t sound like any sort of military command Steve had been part of—it sounded more like bash anything that moves and strategy or chain-of-command be damned. Fine. Different times. Different circumstances. He could adapt.

He started taking meals in his quarters, exercising at odd hours when he knew the rest of the Avengers wouldn’t be around, tiptoeing around the shared living spaces or using emergency exit stairwells to avoid them entirely. Maybe an apartment in Brooklyn would be better, someplace that kept him out of the other Avengers’ hair and allowed them to relax around him when they did socialize. Which at the rate they were going, would be never.

A few times, Steve tried to arrange team-building activities. SHIELD had given him packets about those. “Build unity through fun!” “A commanding officer brings his unit together!" "Five easy steps to better group dynamics!” Everything flopped. For all the excitement the pamphlets implied with their effusive exclamation marks, Steve watched as the Avengers awkwardly sat in circles over card games or food spreads, not speaking, not laughing, not doing much of anything besides fidgeting with their phones.

He let it go. They functioned well enough on the field and he…he’d figure something out. Some way to stop seeing bowler hats or glowing cigarette butts from the corners of his eye. Sometimes he swore he could smell them, unwashed bodies muted with mud, a godawful stench really, but _his_ godawful stench. His men.

And the Avengers weren’t. Not his anyway. Not really.

* * *

“Steve! We got another landing over here. Jesus Christ, these ones have lasers.”

“Please say the lasers are attached to their heads.” Tony, of course. Another reference Steve didn’t quite grasp.

“Guys! A little help.”

“Widow, Thor, you hold the line here. Don’t let them take the bridge. I’m on my way, Hawkeye. Coordinates?” Steve took off at a dead run, wondering if he should radio in Tony for a lift.

“They’re coming in on the Pier. We’ve got stragglers. Trying to clear the civilians but I can’t hold them off _and_ herd.”

“Iron Man?”

“On my way, Cap.”

Steve could hear the whine of the repulsors coming in behind him. He gauged the sound, checked the wind, took a flying leap, and caught hold of the hand Tony had stretched out for him. Tony used the momentum to swing Steve up into a firmer grip, an awkward half-hitch with one arm hooked over Tony’s shoulders and another leg over one thigh. They’d done it a million times in training, a few times on missions. It should have been easy, effortless. But the lasers.

Heat scored Steve’s bicep and then another feverish punch into his ribs. He had long enough to think “Not bad,” and then his leg slipped of its own accord, muscles going limp and lax. Tony must not have realized—Steve hadn’t made a noise, he didn’t think—because the next thing he know, the sky was above and icy wind was whistling all around him. Six burning seconds of hang-time and then concrete, his back on concrete. Except not concrete. Water. Freezing cold so cold.

 _Not again_. _Not like this._

Steve blacked out.

* * *

Memories. Impressions.

A fervent voice in his ear.

Lightning in his side.

Blue blue blue all-consuming.

Fingers on his forehead.

_Ma?_

Cold air on his chest

cold cold

cold

* * *

For all the missions he’d run with the Avengers, this was the first time he found himself waking in the med bay. Usually it was Clint or Tony, and one very memorable and terrifying incident with Natasha. Steve didn’t get knocked out, and normal anesthesia wasn’t strong enough to take him under. No. His bones were set waking, his cuts stitched sans Novocain.

But he knew the antiseptic smell, the dim, warm lighting. The steady tattoo of a heart monitor and the pinch of a blood oxygen clip. Everything felt distant and muffled, like he was experiencing the world through a pillow. Underwater.

Involuntarily, he groaned, tried to jerk away from the thought. A shame his body wasn’t responding. Nothing felt right. Except. Except…

A hand on his. That was what the warm sensation was, right? Someone touching him. 

“Steve?”

So distant and quiet, so thick. Prying his eyes open felt like lifting a car off himself, but when he did, there was a face hovering over him. He knew that face. Clint. Clint wide-eyed, unshaven, a cut on his cheek.

“Shit, you’re awake. Let me just, uh…”

Steve’s mind was coming back to itself, his senses sharpening. He almost wished he could push away the awareness, because with it came the knowledge that his body was broken broken broken. He’d never felt anything quite like what he was feeling now, even when he’d been sickly and weak and fragile. His side burned and pinched at him like acid. One arm itched and throbbed in turn, entombed in a thick plaster cast. From the waist down, nothing. Nothing at all.

“Clint?” he tried to ask, but his tongue was thick and dry and useless. In place of words another gravelly groan.

Behind Clint, another face Steve knew: Tony, equally unshaven, heavy bags of sleeplessness under his eyes, hair flattened into an unruly mess. Where was his fancy pomade, his slick, sharp gravity-defying style? But he held a cup of water with a straw and he brought it closer until the plastic was at Steve’s lips.

“Little sips, ok?” he said, trying to smile but mostly looking harried. “It would really suck to get sick all over yourself.”

Steve sipped, and the icy crystal clarity of the water chased away the last of his grogginess, brought the pain straight back to the forefront, where it clawed at him relentlessly. “The Lumerians?” he managed to rasp.

“Taken care of.” Natasha. She appeared at Clint’s shoulder, apparently unharmed, save for the haunted look in her eyes. “We drove them back into the water, apprehended their leader, and made it very clear that the Island of Manhattan was not for conquering.” Her expression went dangerously cold, and Steve almost felt bad for the Lumerians. Almost.

“My legs…” he started, trying to raise his head to look.

Clint and Tony moved as one, pressing him back against the bed. It embarrassed him that they could hold him down so easily. Worse, it scared him.

“Bad idea, Steve.” Bruce in the doorway. Steve could just see him from the corner of his eye. “You…it was a bad fall.”

Breath caught in his throat, and his side sizzled and burned with the pain of it. “How bad?”

“Multiple vertebrae fractured, one leg shattered, one arm shattered. Plus the toxic effect of whatever was in their lasers. As near as we can tell, it has a similar effect to puffer-fish toxins. Paralytic. That’s why you fell. Couldn’t contract your muscles anymore.”

“I fell on one side.”

“Yeah. You’re lucky it wasn’t straight on your back. I don’t know…” Bruce didn’t finish the thought, but he didn’t have to. Steve could guess. Bruce moved closer to the bed, looking as grizzled as Clint, as tired as Tony.

Steve hated how his voice came out tiny and injured when he said, “I can’t feel my legs.”

Every face around him froze, eyes darting back and forth, communicating silently with each other in a way they never did with Steve. After a moment, Bruce sighed. “I was afraid that might be the case. In X-rays, it looked like your spinal cord was damaged, but there was no way to know the extent it would affect you while you were comatose.”

There was a faint ringing in Steve’s ears, like the sound after a bomb. He tried to wiggle his toes, the ones on the side he guessed wasn’t broken into glassy shards. From the bottom of his line of vision he could see a lump where they must’ve been. Nothing. The blankets remained still.

“My guess is,” Bruce said slowly, waiting for Steve to look back up at him, “that the serum will do things for you that wouldn’t happen in normal humans. Not everyone can jump from ten stories up and survive, and that fall into the water would’ve killed a normal human. Your healing factor is unlike anything we’ve ever seen, so there’s a chance…”

He trailed off and Steve looked around the room again. Natasha’s face was still a blank, angry mask. Tony and Clint were both fidgeting, Clint with a straw and Tony with a tablet. Only Thor would meet his eyes. Steve looked back to Bruce.

“I don’t want to give you baseless hope, Steve. There are no guarantees here.”

“There are no guarantees anywhere,” Steve said, letting his eyes slip closed. The pain was waiting behind his eyelids, his side burning like an electrical shock. “Thanks for…for sticking around. You guys didn’t have to stay here. I know you’ve got mission reports to file, other things to take care of.”

When he opened his eyes again, he wasn’t expecting the abject shock he saw in Bruce’s face, in Tony’s and Clint’s. Natasha looked almost sad, but Steve didn’t think that was the right word. Thor’s grave face suddenly reminded Steve just how many millennia he’d seen.

“Why wouldn’t we stay?” Tony whispered, and then something in his voice grew heated. “You almost died, Steve. You almost died and you seriously think that we would just fuck off to file reports while you were in here, alone?”

Steve flinched and looked toward Natasha again, taking comfort in her familiar mask. “When you put it that way… I just meant that I’m awake now and you guys are busy. And I know I’m not exactly your favorite CO. I get it. It’s fine. Just…head on back to the penthouse.”

Tony made a noise like he’d been punched. Above Steve, Clint looked crestfallen, like a dog who’d been kicked. “Jesus, Steve, is that what you think? You think we don’t like you?” Clint’s hand on his shoulder squeezed, the movement almost convulsive and possessive. “Of course we like you. You, you trusted us. You trusted a bunch of fuck-ups and freaks to have your back in an alien invasion and you’ve trusted us since then on every mission we’ve had together. How could we not like you?”

Steve could see an IV under the skin of his hand, the tape peeling up at the edges. They must’ve put him on something, maybe a special drug concoction cooked up by Bruce. Steve would choose to believe that and to believe that was why he could feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, a lump forming in his throat. “You guys have a funny way of showing it.” Yes. Definitely drugged. He would’ve never said that in his right mind.

Between one blink and the next, Natasha was there, her fingers the barest touch on his face. It was like being brushed by a spider’s web, and Steve wanted to flinch away, but he couldn’t. She held him captive in her gaze, her mouth carved from marble. “We do. We’re all maladjusted reformed criminals here, Steve, and we forget that you’re not. I’m sorry. I should’ve seen.” Before he could answer, she bent and pressed her lips to his forehead, her arm wrapping his good shoulder in a delicate hug. “If you think,” she continued, breath warm on his skin, “for one second we’re leaving you alone here, you’ve got another think coming.”

There was another hand grasping his, the hand with the IV in it. He felt the catch and pull of callouses and tiny scars. From the corner of his eye he could see Tony, looking equal parts angry and determined. Thor towered behind him, his ancient eyes solemn and observant. Bruce circled the bed, ostensibly to check the IV, but once he was close enough he laid his hand on Steve’s head, right above where Natasha hovered.

“I will take first watch,” Thor announced. The others all moved back a little, though none of them broke contact. “Our captain is right in one thing. You all have been too long without sleep. I imagine he would be most displeased with us if we allowed our own health to fall to the wayside.”

“No,” Tony said flatly, his hand squeezing convulsively on Steve’s. “I’ve got a better idea.”

One frantic bluster of activity later, each of the Avengers returned, dragging heavy mattresses and sleep mats behind them, piles of blankets haphazardly tossed on top. When Tony stumbled in wrapped in a red silk robe, a king-size mattress in tow, Steve felt that suspicious prickle of tears again. The meds. Just the meds. He watched as one by one the Avengers settled in, Tony on his ridiculous mattress, half crunched into the wall. Clint was on a sleep mat, leaning up against another wall, bow in hand and quiver at his side. Bruce collapsed onto Tony's mattress, his unruly curls spilling over the wrinkled sheets. Thor, true to his word, sat up in a chair, alert and still armored. Natasha hovered over him, wearing a sweatshirt that looked too large to be hers and a pair of athletic running shorts.

The stared at each other for a moment before Natasha crawled up onto his bed on his good side, carefully laying herself out in such a way that she touched none of his injuries. She opened the book he hadn’t realized she was carrying and began reading out loud, her voice clear in the suddenly silent room. _The Hobbit_. One of Steve’s favorites. Had she known? Steve snorted. Probably.

“J,” Tony said, “overhead at 25%, bedside light on.” The ceiling lights dimmed and the table lamp flicked on, casting a warm golden glow over all of them. Natasha’s voice settled on them like a heavy down blanket. Steve could hear the faint wheeze of Tony’s deep breathing and wondered if he’d been injured or if his lungs always labored that way. Clint looked asleep, but his hand was still wrapped firmly around his bow—a soldier’s sleep. Bruce had his back to them all, somehow still apart from them even in the cramped space of the med bay. Still Natasha read, and Thor watched over them all with glittering blue eyes.

Wrapped in the warmth of it, the slowly dawning realization, Steve finally let his tears flow, relishing in the tickle of them over his cheeks, a reminder that he was alive and maybe he not quite so alone anymore. Natasha wiped them away and paused only briefly in her reading to kiss his forehead before continuing to read. From the corner of his eye, Steve saw his toes twitch.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://arukou-arukou.tumblr.com/post/160137656391/in-the-early-days-steve-doesnt-realize-the).


End file.
